[Women] tend to collect more pieces of data when they think, put them into more complex patterns, see more options and outcomes. They tend to be contextual, holistic thinkers.
Helen FisherRead
You fall in love with somebody who fits within what I call your 'love map,' an unconscious list of traits that you build in childhood as you grow up. And I also think that you gravitate to certain people, actually, with somewhat complementary brain systems.
Interpretation
Romantic attraction is influenced by subconscious preferences formed during childhood.
Helen Fisher's quote suggests that our capacity to fall in love is guided by an internal blueprint or 'love map' established during our formative years. This map includes traits and characteristics that we unconsciously seek in potential partners, and it implies that our romantic connections may also be influenced by the compatibility of our brain systems, creating an innate attraction to certain individuals.
In practice
In a dating seminar discussing unconscious preferences in romantic partners.
[Women] tend to collect more pieces of data when they think, put them into more complex patterns, see more options and outcomes. They tend to be contextual, holistic thinkers.
People live for love. They kill for love. They die for love. They have songs, poems, novels, sculptures, paintings, myths, legends. It's one of the most powerful brain systems on Earth for both great joy and great sorrow.
Your sweetheart calls you by another's name. His eyes linger too long on your best friend. He talks with excitement about a girl at work. And the fire catches. Jealousy - that sickening combination of possessiveness, suspicion, rage, and humiliation - can overtake your mind and threaten your very core as you contemplate your rival.
Any kind of novelty or excitement drives up dopamine in the brain, and dopamine is associated with romantic love.
Most of us make up our minds in the first three minutes of meeting someone whether there's a potential for a relationship.
People have often asked me whether what I know about love has spoiled it for me. And I just simply say, 'Hardly.' You can know every single ingredient in a piece of chocolate cake, and then when you sit down and eat that cake, you can still feel that joy.
Her cheeks were flushed. She caught hold of the Savage's arm and pressed it, limp, against her side. He looked down at her for a moment, pale, pained, desiring, and ashamed of his desire. He was not worthy, not... Their eyes for a moment met. What treasures hers promised! A queen's ransom of temperament. Hastily he looked away, disengaged his imprisoned arm. He was obscurely terrified lest she should cease to be something he could feel himself unworthy of.
Everything hurts, every single thing including the weight of him and I'm crying because it hurts and he's telling me he's sorry over and over again, and I figure somewhere down the track we'll work out the right way of doing this but I don't want to let go, because tonight I'm not looking for anything more than being a part of him. Because being a part of him isn't just anything. It's kind of everything.
...losing through you what seemed myself, i find selves unimaginably mine; beyond sorrow's own joys and hopings very fears yours is the light by which my spirit's born: yours is the darkness of my soul's return... you are my sun, my moon, and all my stars.
Once my heart was captured, reason was shown the door, deliberately and with a sort of frantic joy. I accepted everything, I believed everything, without struggle, without suffering, without regret, without false shame. How can one blush for what one adores?
My heart went cold and only hollow rhythms resounded from within, but then he rose, brilliant as the moon in full and sank in the burrows of my keep, and all my armor, falling down, in a pile at my feet.
What love we've given, we'll have forever.
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